The bogeyman that feminists blame for women's problems or under-achievements because their big-girl pants apparently don't fit.

However Seeing as women are free to pursue any career they want, own any property they wish, attend any college they desire, are owning businesses and running corporations, actively involved in political power, engineering and science, are protected from discrimination by law and are openly praised for all this to cloying degree... We are NOT living in one and have not been for some time.

It is rumored that every man secretly receives a patriarchy check in the mail each month. Feminist scholars are still trying to confirm this.

A rhetorical device which props up feminist ideology by making it easy to impose a state of collective guilt upon half the human race, namely the male half. Upon closer examination, we find that 'patriarchy' as a concept is either A.) Coherent only when too narrowly defined to be broadly useful, or B.) INcoherent when it IS broadly enough defined to be broadly useful.

Feminist ideologues promote the idea of patriarchy nonetheless, because they are banking upon the average person's lack of analytical discrimination -- rather like slipping a 'mind rape drug' into the punchbowl of common discourse. You might wake up with a weird feeling, but you have no idea that you've been screwed.

When radical feminists talk about 'patriarchy', it is actually a code word for Male Power of ANY sort whatsoever. So long as any man on earth has anything that could even vaguely be described as power (up to and especially the power of self-control), they wll say that patriarchy still exists, and that feminism's work is not finished. They want feminism to have a job for a good long time....

A worldwide societal conspiracy where men keep women downtrodden and subjugated which exists exclusively in the minds of female Liberal Arts majors who were abused as children by a male authority figure.

Female Liberal Arts Major: "It's because of the Patriarchy that so many women are sold into sex slavery"
Friend: "Wow, your stepdad sounds like a real scumbag"